


A Little Sweetness Drives Away the Dark

by Chasing_Crows



Series: Winter Break in Gravity Falls [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28716522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chasing_Crows/pseuds/Chasing_Crows
Summary: After having a nightmare, Mabel seeks comfort from her Great Uncle Ford.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Mabel Pines
Series: Winter Break in Gravity Falls [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101728
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	A Little Sweetness Drives Away the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in an AU where Stan and Ford stay at the shack instead of going on their sailing adventure. Post Weirdmageddon, it’s the winter after the events of Gravity Falls.

Ford sat in the dark except for the light emanating from his tablet, giving the kitchen the faintest of glows.

“Grunkle Ford?” a voice from the doorway scratched.

Startled, he looked up from his screen, blinking to try and see his niece through the dark. “Mabel?”

“Shut your eyes for a second,” she said as she flicked the lights on.

“My dear, it’s almost three in the morning. What are you doing up? Is everything okay?”

She looked at the floor and shook her head, only managing to say, “bad dream.”

“Ah, I see.” In fact, he understood all too well, since it was the reason why he, too, was awake at such a late hour. After being thrown from dimension to dimension for thirty years, he’d experienced enough nightmares to last him multiple lifetimes, both ones that were real and in his head. Even though he was safe now, more often than not his sleep came with the horrors of the past few decades revisiting him. Bill, loneliness, hostile dimensions, depression, monsters, and fear still had a tight hold on his dreams regardless of the fact that they were in his past. He wanted to help her, but what could he do when he’d been losing the battle against his nightmares for the majority of his life?

“You know, I have bad dreams, too.”

Mabel looked up to meet his eyes. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Is that why you’re awake right now, too?” Mabel asked.

He considered making up an excuse about having a garbage sleep schedule and that he was just absorbed in his reading, but the dark circles under his niece’s eyes convinced him to nod instead.

“How do you make the bad dreams go away? I can usually meow myself back to sleep, but it hasn’t been working lately. I’ve tried sleeping with more stuffed animals, and I even thought about getting a night light, but I don’t want Dipper to make fun of me for being a baby.”

“If Dipper ever makes fun of you for wanting to feel safe, just let me know and I’ll put him in his place.” Feeling more like Stan than himself in that moment, Ford punched a six-fingered fist into an open palm, and Mabel smiled. “To answer your question, though, I don’t know how to make the bad dreams go away. Usually I try to read and distract my mind, and it helps to leave my bedroom for a change of scenery. If I knew how to stop them for good, though, that’s information I’d publish and get rich from- Stan would be very jealous.”

This got a laugh, so Ford must have been doing something right. “Do you know what else helps?” he said. Mabel shook her head. Ford rose, went to the fridge, and produced a carton of milk and a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. “Want some?”

The girl’s face lit up. “Chocolate milk helps with nightmares?”

“Absolutely.” Ford was already getting out two large glasses as well as a pair of spoons. He squeezed a generous amount of syrup into each glass before filling them the rest of the way with milk. Mabel picked up a glass in each hand as Ford put the milk and chocolate syrup back in the fridge.

“Great Uncle Ford, I don’t think I can go back to sleep right now and I don’t want to go back to my room. Could I stay up with you?”

Would a good uncle tell her to go back to sleep so she would be well rested for the next day or relent and let her stay awake? Ford dismissed the idea as he thought of how shaken up he was after some of his nightmares and said, “that’s okay with me.”

Mabel handed her uncle one of the glasses and took his free hand in hers. She led him to the living room and sat him in the armchair before turning on the television. “I know you said you like to read, but whatever you were looking at is probably too smart and boring for me. Wanna channel surf and let our brains rot?”

Ford chuckled and silently agreed catching up on publications from the American Institute of Physics probably wasn’t something Mabel would find interesting. “I guess I’ve been reading enough scientific literature for one night to give my brain a break.”

Mabel smiled, grabbed the remote, and hopped onto Ford’s lap before he knew what was happening. He was glad to have the kids at the shack, but he was still getting used to what being a grunkle meant. With Dipper, it was easy since he saw so much of himself in the boy, but Mabel always managed to surprise him. Not knowing how to respond to how comfortable she was around him despite having such little time with each other, he began to stir his milk until it was homogeneously chocolatey. Mabel followed suit as she settled on some cartoon he had never seen before.

She seemed to be happy enough staring at the television, but Ford couldn’t focus on the brightly colored characters parading around the screen. Stan had been with the twins for a matter of months now, but collectively it had only been a couple weeks for himself. His brother understood them better, and despite how much Mabel and Dipper displayed a desire to grow closer to him, Ford still felt like an outsider when he saw them with Stan.

Mabel was already halfway done with her milk before Ford had taken his first sip. He brought the glass to his lips and hoped giving her a sugary drink and letting her stay up late at night was acceptable. He reclined the chair so he could relax more easily, and Mabel shifted in his lap to get more comfortable.

It had been so long ago, but at the edges of his memory he could still remember times when he was a little boy where he would watch television with Stan and their mother late into the night. When his father wasn’t around, Ma would sit between the twins so she could give each of them a hand to rub their backs, stroke their hair, or pull them into almost too-tight hugs. In those moments, the three of them were perfectly content, and no matter how scary the stories on the television were, Ford wasn’t afraid with his mother and brother so close by.

His niece had long since finished her milk and set her glass on the dinosaur skull beside the armchair when the next episode of the cartoon started. She had gradually become more relaxed in his lap, and after a while she turned her face away from the screen so she could curl up sideways against her uncle. She rested her head on his chest, and Ford looked down to see her eyes closed. Ford tipped the last of his milk into his mouth before setting his glass aside as well, and in a moment of inspiration he pushed aside any inhibitions and lifted a hand to rub the girl’s back.

Ford couldn’t remember his father ever hugging him in his youth, and the most physical affection he ever gave his sons was the occasional pat on the back if he was proud of them. At the time, Ford didn’t realize those nights of television with Ma and Stan only happened when his father wasn’t around, but even without direct pressure from Pa it didn’t take him long to insist he didn’t need Ma fawning over him. Whether it was a subconscious attempt to be more like his father or not, Ford was only now regretting how he pushed his mother away, literally and figuratively. If he could go back in time, maybe he would have let her hug him like she wanted despite his feelings of being far too grown up for that.

Ford let his fingertips trail over Mabel’s spine as he made even, circular motions, and she responded by snuggling deeper into him and sighing in contentment. “Is this okay?” Ford’s voice was tentative. His niece nodded, and that was enough of a sign for Ford to continue.

They stayed there long enough for yet another episode to begin, and by this time Ford couldn’t tell if Mabel was asleep or awake. He didn’t want to ask in fear of possibly waking her, so he took the remote in his free hand and began to flick through the channels. She didn’t respond, and her deep breathing indicated she had drifted off after all. He decided to leave the television on the Used to be About History Channel, his interest piqued by talk of aliens used to explain various mysterious events throughout history. Stan would get a kick out of it- the narrator wasn’t a very good con man by trying to sell such outlandish stories, and he was amused to see the aliens being depicted as nothing like anything he had come across in his last thirty years.

The narrator got more and more unbelievable as he continued talking, and Ford considered bringing the sleeping girl back to her own bed. He let his hand come away from her back, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to lift and carry her up the stairs. He wasn’t sure if he could make it all the way up to the attic without waking her, so he decided to stay with her in the armchair just until the, what could only be called history in the loosest sense of the word, documentary was over.

He wondered if those nights of television in his childhood had ever ended like this, where it was well past their bedtime but Ma couldn’t bring herself to put the twins to bed and be parted from her boys. If they had, he couldn’t blame his mother for wanting to stretch that point in time for as long as it would last.

A lock of hair fell over Mabel’s face, and Ford lightly brushed it aside. He had only regained his family a few months ago, and looking at the girl in his lap he could already envision her just a year or two older where she would be too big to seek solace from a nightmare with her great uncle. He was sure he wouldn’t have done this had Mabel still been awake, but Ford turned his face and lightly pressed his cheek to the top of her head, letting his stubble mingle with her soft hair. He savored the moment and tried to capture Mabel just as she was at this point in time as he let his arms wrap around her in a gentle embrace.

\- - -

Ford blinked his eyes as the grogginess of sleep still hung over him. He was disoriented and tried to make sense of why he was seated and what the faint noise and light in front of him was. His neck was stiff from falling asleep in the armchair, and once his eyes adjusted to see the television screen he remembered the events of last night. Mabel was still asleep in his lap, and his watch revealed it was 8:37. The house seemed quiet, and he guessed Stan and Dipper were still asleep.

He needed to stand up and stretch his legs, and he figured Mabel would be alright with being woken up now that it was morning. Ford rubbed her back as he said, “Mabel, it’s time to wake up.”

The girl shifted in his lap and rubbed her eyes. “Grunkle Ford?”

“It’s a new day, my dear.”

The girl shook off any lingering sleepiness much more quickly than he had. “Great Uncle Ford, I don’t think I had any more nightmares last night! I guess that chocolate milk really did the trick.”

Come to think of it, Ford couldn’t remember any of his dreams from the night before, either. Maybe it really did take just a little sweetness to drive away the dark. “See? I told you it would work. I do have twelve PhDs, after all, so you should trust I know what I’m talking about.”

The two of them laughed, and Mabel lifted her arms to wrap around his neck. Still laughing and without hesitation, he squeezed her in return and pressed his nose into her shoulder. She squirmed and said, “your face is all scratchy, you need to shave.”

Whether he needed a razor or a little fire was something he would worry about later, so he instead rubbed his face up and down so his cheek tickled hers. Mabel giggled and gently tried to push his face away. “No fair, stop it!”

“Okay, okay, you win,” he said, pulling his face away from hers. Now that he was feeling more awake, he started dreaming of the morning’s first cup of coffee. “What would you say to some breakfast, though?”

“Do you know how to make pancakes? Grunkle Stan does, but sometimes he gets a little hair in them.”

“Do we have any pancake mix? I think I should be able to figure it out.”

Mabel hugged his neck more securely and wrapped her legs around his torso. “Yum, let’s go.”

Ford stood while carrying his niece, and the two of them made their way to the kitchen together.


End file.
